Zealot

by Reza Aslan (Random House)

Aslan’s riveting biography seeks the “historical” Jesus—not the God-man found in the canonical Gospels but the illiterate Jew from a Palestinian backwater who fought to liberate his people from Roman occupation. Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account, centered on Jesus’ non-exceptionalism. First-century Palestine was awash in would-be messiahs proclaiming the coming Kingdom of God, when all non-Jews would be removed from the Holy Land. Most of these pretenders were crucified for sedition, an end that signalled their failure as messiahs. Thanks to Paul of Tarsus, the educated Roman whose epistles declared Jesus the savior of everyone (not only of the Jews), the Jesus movement survived to become the official religion of the state its founder sought to overthrow. In the process, the vengeful nationalist was transformed into the peaceable Christ, a contradiction that has left his followers arguing about his “true” nature to the present day. ♦

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